This year’s rainy season has commenced early in most parts of the federation including the remotest, drought prone areas of the arid North. Farmers have consequently mobilized to their fields without the customary inputs or vital implements to guarantee the success of their enterprise.
They still prepare the almost exhausted land for growing traditional crops by plowing or harrowing with crude tools, used by their pre-historic ancestors, with modest or disappointing yields.
That has been a long-established tradition in the country brought about by the reluctance of governments to effectively embark on enlightening farmers about the promptness or otherwise of the coming of rains and the imperatives of planting in earnest to overcome the irregular changes of unpredictable weather conditions.
In addition to that nonchalance, the authorities are also unconcerned about the timely provision of vital agricultural inputs such as assorted brands of indispensable fertilizer, requisite herbicides and essential insecticides. As a result, farmers are entirely left to fend for themselves at the crucial stages of their activities, distressed by the delayed involvement of governments with belated provision of fertilizer, which hardly becomes useful or effective.
Ironically, government officials are pre-occupied with issuing ominous and boring warnings about impending calamity that may result from disastrous cycle of floods occasioned by universal global warming instead of mobilizing the forsaken farmers toward rigorous activities for increased food production. These government officials, usually amenable to pervasive corruption, consider such activity more rewarding than engaging in a daunting task of securing and distributing agricultural inputs to deserving farmers across the country because they stand to benefit immensely from the spoils gleaned from the relief materials donated by governments and other compassionate individuals.
However, if the commitment and enthusiasm exhibited by these officials in advising the public about the devastation of the imminent floods is similarly applied in strenuous effort to provide necessary inputs and their judicious distribution to farmers, certainly the country will go a long way in creating positive impacts of agricultural development that is focused on maximum productivity.
Farmers are often concerned about governments’ inability to procure agricultural inputs and implements before the onset of farming season until after the rains when they have already made an appreciable headway in cultivating their crops. Incidentally, the huge amount of money expended annually by governments in buying fertilizer is not for the benefit of the farmers but for the advantage of politicians and legislators who use it to demand favor from susceptible farmers, or the unscrupulous middlemen that sell it at unreasonable prices.
The entire notion of procuring fertilizer by the governments, to warrant self-sufficiency in food production, is being defeated especially as local farmers could not avail themselves of its availability, as and when demanded. That has unfortunately stemmed from the fact that agricultural policies in Nigeria are outmoded and do not produce any desired effect. Farming is still being practiced like it was done in primordial era, without actually improving the living standards of the semi-primitive farmers. With this situation, therefore, big time and small holding farmers have been totally incapable of producing the basic food requirements of the country, let alone export same to needy countries. They could also not supply declining industries with raw materials urgently needed for their rapid revival.
The scanty produce from the farmers’ semi barren fields — usually grains and cereals — is grossly inadequate to feed their extended families throughout the year without recourse to imported food retailers at much higher prices. Nigeria’s vast land resources notwithstanding, its farmers still cannot cultivate sugar-cane for manufacturing cube and granulated sugar in place of the bulk imported annually from abroad.
Similarly, The multi-billion Naira river basin authorities across the country, ostensibly put up to promote extensive dry season cultivation of rice, wheat and barley, had not only performed below expectation shortly after coming into being, but are now left fallow with the giant dams constructed to serve their vast acreages likely to fall apart or collapse due to poor maintenance.
The dire consequence of this regrettable situation has been the massive importation of an assortment of foodstuff, conservatively estimated at N900billion annually, mainly from Asian countries that had once depended on Nigeria for breakthrough in agriculture. Surprisingly, some Nigerian merchant princes are privy to this scandalous rip off by international food merchants that capitalize on its oil riches and immense human resources for the flourishing of their lucrative business. In that way they have succeeded in stifling Nigeria’s agrarian ventures, thus facilitating conditions necessary for flooding its homes and markets daily with inferior produce.
This is despite Nigeria’s infinite agricultural potentials and countless resources. What that has gone to demonstrate is total lack of patriotism on the part of Nigeria’s previous leaders who facilitate large capital flight to other countries because of the paltry proceeds from fertilizer racket that go into their miscellaneous bank accounts instead of the pockets of the deprived farmers. Although the government of President MuhammaduBuhari’s has made agriculture the cornerstone of developing the country, such feat couldn’t be achieved without adequate provision of assorted brands of fertilizers before this year’s rainy season runs its full course.
